Patrick suffered blunt force trauma, broken neck

Lenora Patrick, 55, of Mary’s Hill, whose body was found last Wednesday on Auchenskeoch/Buccoo Bay Road leading onto the Claude Noel Highway, suffered blunt force trauma, a broken neck and multiple broken bones.

This was revealed in an autopsy conducted by Pathologist Dr Eastlyn McDonald-Burris on Tuesday at the mortuary of the Scarborough General Hospital on Tuesday.

Assistant Commissioner of Police, Garfield Moore said it is believed that Patrick’s injuries were as a result of a car accident. The body was discovered by an early morning jogger at the side of the road, lying partially in a drain.

Moore said police were continuing investigations.

A relative who was at the mortuary to witness the post mortem, said the family was shocked at the news of Patrick’s death. She said Patrick had no children and lived with a close sibling at Mary’s Hill. She said Patrick will have a private, closed casket burial, and relatives would leave the findings of the pathologist “up to God.”

“The family just wants to have a peaceful burial,” she said.

A sister of the deceased woman also complained to Newsday Tobago about the advanced stage of decomposition of Patrick’s body on Tuesday. She said she and other relatives "jumped" when they first entered the viewing room as the body they saw last week Thursday when they were called to identify it, was in a completely different state at Tuesday’s viewing. She questioned whether the freezer system at the mortuary was working properly.

Also complaining about the advanced stage of decomposition of another body on which an autopsy was being done, were relatives of an elderly woman who was found dead at her home at Fort Street, Scarborough last Wednesday. A male relative said when he viewed the body of the elderly woman that day, it was not so badly decomposed as when he saw it on Tuesday at the hospital mortuary. He said his relative’s body was almost unrecognisable. The autopsy showed that the elderly woman died of natural causes.